All publications herein are incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each individual publication or patent application was specifically and individually indicated to be incorporated by reference. The following description includes information that may be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.
In 2010 alone, it is estimated that 569,490 men and women will die of cancer, with an additional 1,529,560 men and women diagnosed. However, despite billions of dollars spent in cancer research, complete and effective treatments for this terrible disease have still not been developed. Part of the reason is because tumor cells may be made up of a variety of cell types, produced as the cells proliferate and incur different mutations. This diversity, in turn, is part of what has made treatment of cancer so difficult, as a population of cancerous cells could easily include a mutant variety that happens to be resistant to any individual treatment or chemotherapy drug that is administered. The few resistant cancer cells are provided a strong selective advantage in comparison to other cells, and over time, those resistant cells increase in frequency. An effective cancer treatment would therefore benefit from attacking the cancer early, as well as attacking aggressively. This could come in the form of administering a combination of drugs for treatment, as the odds of a single cell being resistant to a larger quantity of drugs is lower. Additionally, an effective cancer treatment could also potentially bypass the diversity of cancer cells by targeting processes that cancer cells rely on for their very growth. One such process is tumors' reliance on producing and processing sugar for its cell growth. Thus, there is a need in the art for the development of additional cancer treatments, including those that have the ability to better target drug resistant tumors.